"Mark & Juanita" wrote in message

Just out of curiosity, have you had any significant issues with
places not accomodating wheelchairs, despite not having an ADA type act?
I
ask because I would expect that most businesses would make reasonable
accomodations just as good business.

You're going to regret asking me this because you'll get an earful. You
might want to take this conversation offline.

The answer to your question is a categorical "YES". I live in Toronto,
Canada's largest city. I'm willing to bet that at least 75% of restaurants
and buildings in Toronto are not accessible to wheelchairs and at least 95%
of them don't have wheelchair accessible washrooms. Smaller businesses do
not see the value in spending the money for ramps or elevators for Toronto's
disabled population. For the past twenty years or so, new office buildings
are wheelchair accessible, but accessible washrooms in these buildings are
few and far between. I can give specific examples of MANY 40 story office
buildings in Toronto without accessible washroom access anywhere except
maybe one on the first floor. What about disabled clients? They don't exist
for some reason? In many cases, historical heritage has allowed government
and public offices to escape the mandate that all public buildings be made
accessible.

Our subway system is only 1/3 accessible with elevators after two five year
plans and one ten year plan to make them all accessible. While the Toronto
Transit system has been implementing low floor and accessible buses as fast
as they can afford them, there's a number of areas served solely by
streetcars that certainly are not accessible and no surface route buses
running.

Wheeltrans, the specialized transit system for the disabled is hopelessly
overbooked with wait times often approaching two hours and ride times often
running in excess of three hours. Imagine going to a job everyday where you
had to ride three hours to work and three hours to get home after waiting
several hours for pick up in both directions? I've actually had to quit a
job because the waiting and travelling time took longer than the hours I was
working.

I live 100 yards from Yonge and Bloor a location many consider the centre of
Toronto. I know this city. Bigger, upscale restaurants are starting to
change their premises to accommodate the disabled, but the fast food
restaurants are not. McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, Kentucky Fried
Chicken, Taco Bell, ad infinitum, I have never seen one wheelchair
accessible washroom in ANY of these chains. At best, they're located in a
shopping mall and leave that kind of thing to the mall designers. Imagine
one or two wheelchair accessible washrooms in a 100+ store shopping mall
capable of handling 1,000's of people concurrently? What percentage of
people are disabled? 10%-15%?

When I go to movie theatres, although most do have accessible washrooms on
the premises, I often get in verbal arguments with people who use them
instead of walking the extra 50' to the regular public in movie washrooms.

Need to hear more? Email me privately.